The Quran on the oceans:
http://www.thekeytoislam.com/en/scientific-explanations/oceans.shtml
THE LAST WORD
George F. Will
As the Oceans Rise
Obama's words mesmerize a nation accustomed to leaders who use words with antic indifference to their accuracy.
From the magazine issue dated Jun 16, 2008
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Journalists consider themselves crusty, unsentimental creatures who, their battered fedoras shoved back on their heads, have slouched out of Ben Hecht's 1928 play "The Front Page," oozing skepticism from every pore. Actually, they are round-heeled romantics, such pushovers for a new swain that they did not laugh until their ribs squeaked when Barack Obama concluded his triumphal St. Paul, Minn., speech by proclaiming: "I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick …"
It is absolutely certain that generations from now someone will remember that even before that night in St. Paul, care was provided to the sick in America. Obama also asserted that future generations would say that "this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal …" The man and the moment have met.
Obama's words mesmerize a nation accustomed to leaders who routinely use words with antic indifference to their accuracy. The No Child Left Behind law promises, indeed requires, that by 2014 all children will be "proficient" in reading and math. That will not happen. Obama vows to reduce carbon emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. John McCain says 60 percent. Whether either goal should be reached, neither will be. Commentators, too, use words in peculiar ways, as when they speak of Obama and Hillary Clinton needing to bring together "the two wings of the party." There is the left wing, and the other left wing. As one precise commentator has said, Clinton and Obama differ about as much as the Everly Brothers.
As the primary season folds seamlessly into the general election campaign, there are few certainties, but this will be the first presidential election contested by two sitting senators, so this will be just the third time the country has elected a sitting senator (Harding in 1920, Kennedy in 1960). And there is an asymmetry between the senators' possible trajectories: McCain, although a very familiar figure, has a downside risk from becoming better-known concerning one issue; Obama has an upside potential from becoming better-known regarding an elemental fact.
McCain is fortunate. The eerie narcissism of Clinton's speech the night that Obama clinched the nomination distracted attention from McCain's badly delivered speech the same night, in New Orleans. If he really opposes torture, he will take pity on the public and master the use of a teleprompter.
He said, "The American people didn't get to know me yesterday, as they are just getting to know Senator Obama." McCain, who has been running for president for 10 years, has never entertained the thought that the country might sometimes have a surfeit of him. Does some statute require that he appear on at least one of the five Sunday morning talk shows every week (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News)? He has appeared on them 67 times since 2004. He has been such a ubiquitous figure, it will be difficult for him to seize the attention of a public that thinks it knows everything about him.
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